My first 5K

This summer it has been hard for Jill and I to find time to get to the gym. It takes so long to drive there, workout, then shower and head to work or home. We decided that instead of going to the gym this summer we would go jogging instead. Jogging is nice because you can do it anywhere that you find convenient. For us it is convenient to jog at 6:30 in the morning at Jill's house (well maybe not convenient, but the only time we could find.) Jill lives right on the light rail so we can jog close to her house, shower at her house, and then I can go straight into work on the light rail. It has been a good system to keep us working out.

After a couple of weeks of this we decided that we should run a 5K. Having a goal would help us run harder because we knew we were building up to something. We signed up for the Hot Dam Red, White and Boom 5K that took place on July 3rd at 6:30 in the evening in 90 degree weather!

Here we are showing off our free tee shirts:

And we're off:

Our goal was to run it in under 30 minutes. We didn't pace ourselves really well in the beginning, so we ended up at 33 but we were happy with that. Here we are running really fast at the end, once you see the finish line you can't help but run fast!

We were definitely hot and tired!

But we were happy that we had finished!

(thanks to Chris for being our photographer!)

We plan on running another one in Late September/October. This will make sure that we keep on working out when I get back from Spain, and will give us another goal to work toward. We are definitely going to train better next time, and we will try and remember to pace ourselves!

Countdown to Spain . . . 2 days!!!

Twins Game

Along with getting free lunches, working at a firm this summer has other perks. We get to do lots of fun events, like tour a brewery, attend a judges panel and meet the judges, and many other things. Last Thursday we all got to go to a twins game to see the new stadium.

They had extra tickets so Chris got to come along.


It was a lot of fun to eat lots of food and hang out with everyone. Here is another picture of the field and Nicole, one of my favorite summer associates. She goes to Mitchell too and she is awesome!

And here is one of Cara and I, she is my other favorite summer. She goes to UC Berkeley. I will for sure miss her once we finish up work on Friday!

All in all we had a great time!

Count down till Spain . . . 4 days!!!!

Rejection and Acceptance

So there is this thing called Law Review. It is a journal that just about every law school in the country puts out. Ours is called the William Mitchell Law Review. It is very prestigious to become a staff member on Law Review and even more so to be an editor. Each year the William Mitchell Law Review puts on a write on competition. A couple of days after finals they give you a packet of a bunch of information and you have three weeks to write a 16 page case note and complete an editing exam. This year 46 students were chosen to be staff members from the write on competition, and 4 were chosen because they have good grades.

My long term career goal is to be a Federal Judge. The first step to this career is to clerk for a Federal Judge when I graduate from law school. The only thing is, to do this you have to have awesome grades and be on Law Review. So of course I chose to put myself through three weeks or writing craziness to try and get on law review. It was long, and it was grueling, but in my head it was worth the chance to be on a journal.

So you can imagine my disappointment when three weeks later I got the "sorry you weren't chosen" e-mail. I was disappointed, but mostly my pride was hurt. I slumped around for a couple of days being sad and disappointed. Then I realized that there is more to life than law school, and that I could always try again next year and I accepted the fact that I had been rejected and moved on with my life.

Then came Friday. I opened up my e-mail to a great surprise. I had an e-mail from the William Mitchell Law Review Editor in Chief. I had graded on to Law Review. To say I was excited would be an understatement. I'm pretty sure my office mates thought that I was crazy :) Safe to say I couldn't do anymore work that day, I had to run to meet Chris and tell him the good news!

So now I am officially a staff member of the William Mitchell Law Review. I can also officially say that being rejected from something you want so bad is an awful feeling, but you will be a much happier person if you learn to accept life as it comes!

Happy 4th Everyone

Count Down to Spain . . . 6 days!!!!

Dumbo

meet Artemis:

He has floppy ears like Dumbo:

They make him even cuter when he runs:

He has a pretty good sniffer

When he does sleep (rare occasion I tell ya!) he sometimes forgets to take his bone out of his mouth (not the most flattering picture!)

He has the cutest blue eyes

He loves to chew sticks . . .

and rocks . . .

and faces :)

God bless D'artagnan for putting up with him :)

Summer Time

At happy hour today my lovely friends:

Jill and Maureen, reminded me about how I have been a HORRIBLE blogger this summer :)

I know they are right, and I could go on and on about how busy I have been working 8-6, getting up early to jog, and trying to get stuff done around the house, but that wouldn't be completely true (I also spend a lot of time watching the bachelorette, and walking around with Chris and sitting around outside) . . .

So instead of making excuses, I'll give you a quick update of my summer thus far, with the hopes that I will get better at blogging before and while I am in Spain!

First we got a new puppy:

Artemis the Weimaraner. Currently 15 pounds of cute, lovable, peeing all over my house puppy :) Soon to be 80 pounds of well trained cuddly puppy (we are sending him to puppy "boot camp" while we are in Spain plus he is going to obedience class with Chris, he should be good to go in . . . about . . . 2 years :))

Next my little brother graduated, I was so proud!

Next I started my job at the big downtown firm. It is fun and stressful all at the same time. Working a full day takes some adjusting too, and now that I am adjusted, my time ends next Friday! It is also bittersweet because they feed us, all of the time, literally I have not bought or brought my lunch once since I started working there! Good because i get amazing food for free, bad because amazing food is not good for my expanding stomach!

This weekend I am running my first ever 5K, i'll try to write about that random experience later! Next week is my last week at work, and then next Saturday (the 10th) I will be on a plane to Spain!!!!

Stubborn

Ever since I was very small I have always been stubborn. Yes I was quiet and sweet, but if things didn’t go my way I would cross my arms and pout until they did.

This characteristic followed me through life. If I set my mind to something it was, “my way or the highway.” My dad always said it nicely by telling me that I wasn’t very flexible. My sister and brother in law added some humor to it by giving me the “hail Hitler” sign whenever I got into one of my stubborn moods

.

Little did I know how much my long time stubbornness would come into play in law school.

You see, I have this wonderful study group

.

Jill, Maureen, and I study very well together. In fact, during finals we spend ALL day, EVERY day together. Which is wonderful because we learn a lot and have lots of fun (as long as we aren't crabby!)

But I’m afraid I did not warn these ladies about my stubborn characteristic. However, they found out about it very quickly.

You see, when we study we talk about the concepts that we need to know. We all say what we think is meant by this concept and more often than not at least one of us thinks differently then the others. So we ensue on a journey to get the other person to understand whichever we decide is the right way. It is a great learning experience for all of us. Until I am the one who is wrong.

When I am wrong we ensue on a long drawn out, “please Laura just take our word for it” discussion where I sit stubbornly (in my head I cross my arms and pout) and poor Jill and Mo have to explain it to me again, and again, and again until it makes sense in my head and I can concede to the fact that they are right.

So really this post is a toast to Mo and Jill, who have stuck through my stubbornness (and still let me study with them.) You guys are the best and I don’t know what I am going to do next year when we all don’t have the same classes . . . you will have to warn my future study mates J

Finally Done

With Monday came a sigh of relief. I pushed the send button on my last final (Torts) and I was done, finally done.

You would think that lots of celebrating commenced and I stayed out partying all night long. But to tell you the truth, I had already celebrated that weekend and I was tired and just wanted to go home and hang out with Chris.

I celebrated before I was finished?? Oh yes I did!

After Civ Pro on Thursday, we only had one final left, Torts. Torts is not only our easiest subject, but it is the easiest to study for because our Professor is only looking for analysis. It is completely open book/note/whatever you want to bring. Our study group had already finished our outlines and wrote a bunch of practice essays, so come Saturday we were ready to go and didn't really need more practice (though we had planned a session for Sunday to make ourselves feel better because everyone else was FREAKING OUT and studying like maniacs . . .)

So I decided to have my long awaited "burning" party that Saturday. The pictures will tell the rest:

Meet my contracts manuscript:

You see, our Professor was writing this book while she was teaching it to us. Despite the fact that it is a good, well thought out book, Contracts was still my most hated subject. So I decided to fulfill every student's dream and burn this one when I was done (being that it wasn't actually a book, but printed out pages, I did not feel bad about this)

So we invited over Margo, Phil and Jill:

And the burning commenced.

We were very excited:

And we watched it burn and burn

And then it was gone forever . . .

And then we played video games and had some good laughs for the rest of the night. It was a very good time.